Goldblatt David: The Age of Football

The epic exploration of society, politics, and economics in the twenty-first century through the prism of football, by David Goldblatt, who has previously won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award.
In the twenty-first century, football is first. First among sports themselves, but it also now commands the allegiance, interest and engagement of more people in more places than any other phenomenon. In the three most populous nations on earth - China, India and the United States, where just twenty years ago football existed on the periphery of society - it has now arrived for good. Nations, peoples and neighbourhoods across the globe imagine and invent themselves through playing and following the game.
In The Age of Football, David Goldblatt charts football's global cultural ascent, its economic transformation and deep politicization, taking in prison football in Uganda and amputee football in Angola, the role of football fans in the Arab Spring, the footballing presidencies of Bolivia's Evo Morales and Turkey's Recep Erdogan, China's declared intention to both host and win the World Cup by 2050, as well as the FIFA corruption scandal.
Standing at the intersection of the game where money, power and identity meet, Goldblatt, like no sports writer or historian before him, presents a sweeping story that is remarkable in its scope, breathtaking in its depth of knowledge and is a brilliantly original perspective on the twenty-first century. It is the only account of how football has come to define every facet of our social, economic and cultural lives and at what cost, shaping who we think we are and who we want to be.

Praise for David Goldblatt
'Goldblatt has become arguably the premier anglophone sports historian . . . illuminating, erudite, fair-minded, readable, told at a cracking pace' Financial Times
'Stunning . . . will be the measure against which all other such volumes are judged . . . A magnificent work. Elegant, witty, stylish and crisp' Guardian